For book/ebook authors, publishers, & self-publishers
What's Your Biggest Challenge with Your Book?
I'd be interested to learn what authors/publishers on this network think their biggest challenges are with their book. I wonder if there's any common, pervasive challenge we all face.
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by J. Steve Miller on
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Joel,
Are you making a good many actual sales through social media, or is it more good connections you're making and generally getting the word out there?
I made some initial sales when my wife and I let our Facebook friends know about the book, but after that with our blogs and Twitters and Facebook it's been mostly making useful connections.
Now I'm concentrating my social media effort more on commenting on busy blogs related to my topic and trying to get them to read a copy of my book and blog about it - going to where the people are already gathered rather than trying to gather people around my blogs and twitter.
What do you think?
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Permalink Reply by Joel Friedlander on
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Steve,
Well, I wear two hats on social media, because I'm both a self-published author and the proprietor of a publishing-services company. As an author I'm just putting my original book back into print this month, and have another I'm editing, so most of my social network activity has been around my company, not my books.
On that side I've found Twitter and to a lesser extent Facebook to be really effective in connecting to other people in the same "space." Like you, I spend a fair amount of time commenting on blogs and posting in relevant forums. However, my whole focus has been to drive people to my blog, where I generally post 5 days a week with pretty meaty articles about book design, book production and the like.
My goal here is to control the space that I am building (my blog) rather than put all my time and energy into spaces that I have no real control over (other people's blogs, forums). So I guess that's different from what you are doing. I see the blog and the traffic I generate there as the ultimate goal, because I get actual paying work from people who get to know me this way, see the quality of the work I do, etc. as well as building the blog itself as an asset.
I think part of the difficulty (and I don't know that you are having any difficulty) is that the financial services niche is so competitive, with so many big players that there doesn't seem to be that much "air" for little guys to make an impact. Unless a book had some really new or really unusual take on the subject, it might be really hard to get any attention for it.
Thanks for asking, Steve.
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Joel, give us the url to your blog. Some of us may want to connect with you! Mine is www.freelancewriterblog.blogspot.com .
Thanks for letting us know how you're using Twitter and Facebook effectively. Sounds like you're using it in a good way.
Concerning financial books, the good thing is that there are tons of avenues out there to get the word out. Example: I got a great review by the financial columnist at the Oakland (California) Tribune. Financial columnists and financial bloggers need a constant flow of new ideas, so I could spend years following all these trails.
The main thinking among publishers is that financial books will only sell if the writer has a strong platform, like a syndicated financial column. But when I look at Amazon rankings, my sales seem to be at least as good as the book sales of big-time columnists (depending upon the sales in any given day), so my marketing seems to be paying off.
Steve Miller
Author of Enjoy Your Money! How to Make It, Save It, Invest It and Give It
"The money book for people who hate money books."
http://www.amazon.com/Enjoy-Your-Money-Make-Invest/dp/098187567X/re...
I think the main avenues of sales will be selling to schools to use as a text (I'm working on a lot of educational contacts this season) and CPA's buying in bulk to give out as gifts to graduates and clients (one CPA has already purchased 100 copies to give out.)
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Steve,
My blog is at www.thebookdesigner.com and thank you. Although I've only been doing the Twitter and Facebook activity for a few weeks I've just started trying to publicize the blog, and will be slow to ramp up that effort because my main concentration right now is putting a lot more good content up.
As a book designer my concentration is almost exclusively pre-press. However, this seem like an advantage to me since the number of people competing for self-publishers' marketing dollars is intense.
When I had my own publishing company I aggressively pursued special sales, like the one you made to your CPA because they are really good for moving books and although I gave a deep discount (50% minimum usually) the money coming in chunks without fulfillment costs, and the fact that they were sold on a non-returnable basis made them great for my company. I would keep pursuing that avenue, and go up the line to larger corporations. Just one that likes your book and wants to buy it for a premium or incentive can be a major sale.
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Permalink Reply by Cynthia Vespia on
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Bill, right now I'm running into a problem with wordcount. Now Dean Koontz once said that a story is only as long or as short as it should be and you can't force it either way. However, that being said, I am currently writing a sequel to my horror novel DEMON HUNTER and it needs to come in around the same length as the first one..a little over 200 pages. I'm almost finished and waaaay off the mark. So I have to go back in and pad it with detail. I guess it's like they say, the sequels are never as good as the original.
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Permalink Reply by John C. Bieber on
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Cynthia, I have the opposite problem. I'm also doing a sequel but the second makes me think my first was a little short at 258 pages. Second will be longer, easy 315 pages or about 115,000 words. I can go deeper this time with the 3 main characters, add back stories, other things. I won't have to go looking for things to pad. Good luck.
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Permalink Reply by albertasequeira on
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Hi Cynthia,
I'm also completing a sequel to Someone Stop This Merry-Go-Round; An Alcoholic Family in Crisis. It's about losing my husband in 1985 at forty-five to this disease.
The sequel is Please, God, Not Two; This Killer called Alcoholism. It's the continuation of our lives and losing my daughter in 2006 at thirty-nine from the same demon.
The first book was 343 pages. I'm about the same with the sequel. I feel like you that the sequel has to leave a powerful impact after the first one. I feel the beginning and end are fine but the middle needs more work with emotions during the events.
Writing isn't easy.
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Cynthia,
Rather than pad, have you thought about exploring more narrative arcs to your character's development? There is so much background to how characters develop that you might find readers would be quite willing to digress a little to learn more about the background (hence motivation) of the actors within your story. Just a thought.
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Permalink Reply by Daniel P. McGinley on
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It's funny (at the risk of sounding full of myself), but I've won a lot of writing awards and contests, and was one of those students that teachers always picked to be a great writer, but now that I've finished a book, I don't know how to get it into the right hands, to even take a look. There are so many scams out there, I don't even know where to start anymore. That's the Pepsi challenge, and waaa-waaa-waaa . . . but man, it's depressing. Thanks for the shoulder, Bill. I guess it's time to grow-up and soldier on.
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Hi Daniel,
This is what I would do. Buy a Writer's Market Book or go to the library to read one. Find the publishers or agents looking for your genre, go to Preditors and Editors site to make sure they don't have a red flag, go to their websites, see how many books they have published, and if it looks good, send a query letter or whatever it is that they request.
I'd start from there.
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Thanks, sounds like a plan. I've already got a good start by going to Preditors and Editors, and reading the hit list. I have to start getting those query letters out, etc. Thanks again.
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Daniel, I strongly recommend you try to find a group near you for publishing. You can check the directory at The Independent Book Publishers Association website for affiliated groups. Here in the San Francisco Bay Area we have the Bay Area Independent Publishers Association (BAIPA) where people come to learn in a supportive community of other authors at different stages of the process. It really helps.
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